Since we’re essentially a Dean Blunt and James Ferraro blog now, we of course had to post this bootlegged performance between the two last month at Unsound Festival in Kraków, Poland. The unannounced, impromptu jam session, titled “Watch the Throne 2” (the follow-up to their equally bizarre 2012 collaboration), lasted over 40 minutes, with Blunt on Rhodes/vocals and Ferraro on the venue’s house piano. Like last year’s performance, the two meander about on their respective instruments, with no clear scale or unified trajectory to anchor the sounds. Save for a few moments of melody and progression, it barely hangs in there for the majority of the time, its (mostly) modal, impressionistic explorations ultimately serving as background music for a chatty audience, occasionally punctuated by abrupt cheering from audience members who mistake sparseness for endings.
But this wasn’t intended to be a “concert” at all. Before the performance, Blunt encouraged the audience to chat, to socialize, to be as rude as possible. With no center, no spectacle, no channeling of violence or desire, we’re left somewhere in the middle, drifting aimlessly and hopelessly between concepts and percepts, our gaze frustratingly directed to nowhere in particular and our ears continually expecting a resolution that never comes.
• Dean Blunt: http://youtube.com/pollyjacobsen
• James Ferraro: http://hipposintanks.net/artists/james-ferraro
More about: Dean Blunt, James Ferraro
